What Happened to my Progressives?

With all this heating up of our political year, I ran across this GREAT picture of the early Clintons and it really got me thinking: What the hell happens to people as they get older?

A LOT, obviously. Pictured here, the Clintons look like people I’d want to have a conversation with. Shit, they even look like FRIENDS of mine… I have a feeling that back in these days they had similar ideas to mine – that they wanted to provide sustainable government, a strong work ethic and maybe (just maybe) held a similar distaste for fascism.

I made Justin promise me that we don’t fall down the same path over the critical switching years of our late 30s-50. That seems to be when things go awry.

Time has a way of working the progressive into a conservative as we’ve seen with almost every baby boomer alive. Personally, I can pick from a pool of people I know in the same age range as the Clintons and come up with a handful of progressive people.

But there are still some progressive people in the world and in the voting mass. And this is a special election we have a woman and a “more apparently” black man running for office against big ol’ Whitey McCain.

I say “more apparently” black because we’ve had other mixed-black/white presidents before, they just didn’t “look” like it, but then that’s the curse of the American Eyeball: So many of us vote with our eyes instead of our minds. It’s a lot easier to accept once you recognize it.

Still, my main man is way ahead, even with Clinton’s primary uplift. She needed it and so I’m glad for her. I have to keep in mind that there are lots of people (like me) who don’t vote in the primaries and our lovely electoral college might hand us a nice winner this time.

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2 Comments

keri marion
on March 5 at 7:49 pm

justin said he looks like zak, too.. and i agree. it’s funny!

i think the corruption might come with the accumulation of physical wealth (assets, money, etc) because i’ve seen it in people outside of politics as well… a dramatic change in the 40s.

it’s so scary because i doubt anyone who makes the change THINKS they make the change, in fact, in many cases, i’m sure they believe themselves to be unchanged for the most part.